The good budget news is what wasn’t in it.
There was no dipping into the municipal revenue-sharing pool to balance its own books. The Saskatchewan Party government made good on its promise to still provide rural and urban municipalities with their full share of one percentage point of the five-per-cent of the PST — 20 per cent of all the sales tax revenue.
For the smaller cities and towns, that translates into the following sums: Estevan, $2.36 million; Humboldt, $1.21 million; Lloydminster, $2.09 million; Meadow Lake, $1.08 million; Melfort, $1.19 million; Melville, $970,000; North Battleford, $2.97 million; Swift Current, $3.31 million; Warman, $1.51 million; Weyburn, $2.24 million, and; Yorkton, $3.35 million.
All provincial taxpayers — both rural and urban — were also greeted with the good news that Finance Minister Ken Krawetz would not be passing education costs on to local ratepayers’ bill.
Premier Brad Wall strongly hinted at this because the provincial government now pays 65 per cent of all education costs and local ratepayers pay 35 per cent. Most likely, there will have to be some sort of levelling out in the future.
But this being an election budget, the Sask. Party government felt no particular compulsion to offend anyone right now. This was accompanied by the added good news that the government will pick up 100 per cent of the capital costs for new rural schools.
More good news followed: No canceled capital works projects were cancelled.
That, of course, includes things like the Children’s Hospital in Saskatoon and the by-pass in Regina — projects that could likely use some serious re-thinking when it comes to both their design and long-term ramifications.
But it also has meant carrying on with $1.3 billion in capital building in the 2015-16 budget. Here are some of the highlights for rural residents:
Highways: $43.2 million for highway twinning projects; $7.6 million for twinning Hwy. 39 from Estevan to Bienfait; $1.2 million for twinning Hwy. 6 and 39 from Regina to Estevan; $7.5 million for the Warman-Martensville interchange; $5.8 million for Hwy. 7 passing lanes from Delisle to Rosetown; $1 million for passing lanes from Saskatoon to Humboldt, and; $15 million for last year’s flood response projects.
Schools: $31.6 million for school maintenance and renewal including the Hague high school; $28.6 million to complete school projects at Langenburg, Hudson Bay, Martensville High School, Gravelbourg, and Weyburn Comprehensive, and; $19.2 million for several new schools including St. Brieux’s.
Health care: $6.2 million to start construction of an integrated care facility at Leader; $4.5 million for the Kelvington integrated care facility; $500,000 to begin planning the Weyburn hospital, and; $129 million for Saskatchewan Hospital integrated correction facility at North Battleford.
Advanced Education: $10.6 million for continued construction of Southeast Regional College and $4.5 million for continued construction of Yorkton’s Parkland Regional College Trades and Technology Centre.
Sure, there were fee hikes. There are some 6,000 Saskatchewan seniors earning more than $65,515 that will no longer be eligible for the Drug Plan. The Saskatchewan Employment Supplement will soon only apply to children 12 and other (as opposed to 18 and under), And the active families benefit will be income tested, now only applying to families earning less than $60,000, annually.
But, all in all, most were saved from the ravages of budget that predicts oil will only average $57 US a barrel — nearly half of what government was predicting a year ago.
However, there is a big catch: These miraculous results were achieved by hiking public debt to $13.3 billion from $11.7 billion.
And that massive spending comes as a result of borrowing some $700 million from the capital market — borrowed money that will cost us $735 million, assuming it takes the full thirty-year term to repay this loan.
The bad news is we may be paying for this budget for years to come.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 22 years.
